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Voices

Naomi and her sister Louise Wangarb Kigathe

Journalist Carolyn Watt is with Save the Children staff working with children affected by the violence in Kenya's camps

(February 28, 2008) 

"I watched as our house went up in flames. All our belongings. The house I was born in.  I watched as everything burnt to ashes," said mother-of-one Naomi Wanjiru Waranga.

Naomi, 32, and her family were forced to flee their home in Kericho in the southern Rift Valley in the post election violence which has left at least 1,000 people dead and driven an estimated 600,000 people from their homes.

One of 14,500 Kukuyu seeking refuge in Nukuru's Ask Showground, Naomi, who worked as a teacher in her home town, and three generations of her family are rammed into a tent little more than six feet square, in living conditions that would befit the cattle that traditionally use this venue on market days.

"We spent three weeks sleeping in the local police station. Then a Government vehicle came and brought us here," said Naomi, who has been living here for the past seven days with 12 family members - including her seven year old son Joseph, her niece, nephew and cousins and her 70-year-old grandmother.

Naomi was driven from her home in the nationwide violence that has been driven by ethnicity and perceived political affiliations, but blurred with opportunistic vandalism and banditry.

A Kukuyu heartland, Nakuru, Kenya's fourth largest city, has been a hub of the country's unrest and displacement. Those affected have sought refuge at Nakuru showground, as well as the Afraha Stadium, Lanet Police Post, Pipeline, St Francis Catholic Church, Holy Cross Catholic Church and Central police station.

The violence has included killings, rape, forceful evictions, looting, extensive burning of houses, plundering of villages and communities and huge internal displacement.

Many children have been separated from their parents and families, exposed to exploitation and abuse, child trafficking and prevented from attending schools as they lack school materials and uniforms.

Nakuru for now remains calm. While the possibility of revenge attacks remains, the 7pm city-wide curfew has prevented much of the violence that characterised the previous six weeks. 

As peace talks in Nairobi continue to flounder, where next for the estimated 100,000 people, like Naomi, whose lives have been torn apart?

"We can't go back. We are too scared to go home. We have nothing to go back to," said Naomi.

Tens of thousands have fled and still more are on the move back to ‘ancestral' lands; to regions they have never even visited in what is a cataclysmic ethnic shift that has dramatic and little foreseen, consequences that a political handshake can never solve.

Even if a political resolution comes soon the damage caused to the social fabric of society, the economy, the perception of Kenya as a peaceful tourist nirvana, to the 100,000 children still in makeshift camps without schooling, inadequate clean water and sanitation, many of whom have witnessed barbaric violence, will take years to overcome. 

"We wanted revenge. We lost everything," said Naomi.

"We can't work. We can't feed ourselves.

"But we don't know how long we can stay here. We are hungry and it gets very cold at night. We can't wash the children properly. We can't keep living like this. But nobody is coming up with answers.

"Everybody is talking - Bush, the Americans, Kibaki, Kofi Annan - but what about us?

"We are left here cold and hungry with not enough shelter.  As they talk my cousin sleeps outside because there isn't enough space inside the tent.

"I did feel angry, I felt hatred. But now we forgive them. We just want peace.

"At least we are alive."

 

Read more survivors' stories 
Read an account from one of our aid workers